Addicted to novelty since 2001

Entire Wired Collection on eBay

June 5, 05

For a few years, I trucked around my collection of Wired magazines. I was missing a couple of issues from the first year, but I more or less had the entire first five or six years. Then I recognized that I was never, ever going to refer to them again (with a few notable exceptions), and that they were available for free on the Web, so I dumped them.

Own the definitive record of the growth of digital culture! You can see the dot-com boom by looking at the spines of these magazines. In 96 & 97, they begin to get very large. After the dot-com bust, they immediately slim down.

I’ve got the first two issues kicking around somewhere. I think the second one has Douglas Coupland on the cover, promoting Microserfs (nope, that was issue 2.1). I’m very fond of the special Wired: Scenarios issue, which contains my favourite essay.

Looking back on the covers now, it’s very apparent how influential the design of the magazine has become. Do you think Dose would be running facts horizontally along the top of its pages if Wired hadn’t done it in the mid-90s?